This invention relates to a liquid food effective for improving constipation. Particularly, this invention relates to a liquid food effective for improving constipation, which being superior in taste, and pleasant to the palate.
Recently the role of fibrous materials contained in food, that is so called edible fibers or dietary fibers, in dietary life has become more and more important. There have already been many studies regarding the physiological importance of taking in edible fiber. For example, one of the result that Burkitt reported in "Epidemiology of Cancer of the Colon and Rectum", CANCER Vol 28(1971) No. 1, pp 3-13 after studying the dietary life of African natives, is that those people who had diets that included lot of edible fiber had lower rates of appendicitis, diverticulum diseases, cardiovascular diseases and colic cancer than Westerners with low fiber diets. Also, in "Physiochemical Characteristics and Nutritive Effectiveness of various Dietary Fiber (DF)", Proceeding, 33rd Annual Meeting of Japanese Society of Nutrition and Food Science (May 1-3, 1979, Tokyo), Ebihara et al, as a result of experiments using edible fibers and wheat bran, confirmed that edible fibers shorten retention time of food in the body, and increases the amount and water content of feces.
These results of these studies hold interest particularly from the aspect of curing and preventing constipation, and recently it is being done to treat a material abundant in edible fibers such as bran or germ for easy eating or blend into a conventional foods. Further, the use of edible fiber together with other physiologically useful substances to enhance their effects has also been tried. For example Japanese Patent Laid Open No. 59-173062 offers a health food for improving constipation which consists of edible fiber and a proliferation accelerating factor for bifidobacterium (eg. lacturose).
However, ad edible fibers are generally difficult to stably suspend in water, such a conventional kinds of foodstuffs were limited to foods in a solid state, and there has been no liquid food or beverage having incorporated edible fiber in order to improve constipation. And also, the above mentioned conventional food containing edible fiber can easily have their taste and texture corrupted by the addition of edible fiber, therefore, if taste should be taken into consideration as an important factor, there is the problem that sufficient amounts of edible fiber cannot be incorporated therein. Further, the fact that liquid food cannot be produced makes it difficult to increase the variety of presentable foods containing edible fiber, making it hard to meet consumers' diversified tastes.
In order to expect significant effect, in many cases fairly large amounts of edible fiber should be taken, but this is often accompanied by side effects such as diarrhea, flatulence, abdominal inflation, celialgia, etc. Therefore it is not recommendable to take in too much edible fiber at one time.